ESL One Cologne to become next Valve backed CS:GO major

Valve has announced that the upcoming ESL One Cologne tournament will be the next Counter-Strike: Global Offensive major.

The event, which is set to run between July 5th and 10th at the LANXESS Arena in Cologne, will feature a one million dollar prize pool for the top eight teams from the last major, and eight teams from the qualifiers to compete for.

Already directly invited to ESL One Cologne are: Luminosity, NaVi, Astralis, Team Liquid, NiP, Fnatic, CLG and Virtus Pro as they all finished in the top eight at MLG Columbus. Cloud 9, Team EnVyUs, Splyce, FlipSid3 Tactics, G2, Gambit, Faze Clan and mousesports will all compete in the qualifier along with eight teams from the Regional Minor Championships.

The Regional Minor Championships will now give the winning team the lions share of the $50,000 prize pool while both finalists will be invited to the main qualifier. Any players who competed at the previous major, but are not part of a team that has been invited to ESL One Cologne or the qualifier will be allowed to compete in the minors.

All of the minors will take place in May, with DreamHack organising the European region, StarLadder organising the CIS region, and PGL organising the Asia region. The American qualifier is yet to be detailed.